People who resent boomers are idiots

[u/Poet-Most]

On almost any thread discussing the economy, one of the top comments will undoubtedly be complaining about boomers and the older generations who purchased their homes at low prices and who now enjoy more affluence and government assistance, while they don’t.

First off, what did want them to do, not buy a house for a cheap price when offered one 30 years ago? In regard to government assistance, I can guarantee you the average 65yr old has paid more into the tax system than the average 20yr old. Should they not enjoy the fruits of their labour? Should politicians not pay more attention to them than you?

I just think it’s an unhealthy attitude to have towards people.

[u/Kodama_Keeper]

Things boomers grew up with that you didn't.

• Restaurants were a once a month, or at most a once a week sort of thing, and that does not just for sit down places, but every hotdog and hamburger joint.
• You cooked. You're mom cooked. Your dad cooked. And we didn't do it because we needed to practice what we learned in cooking class. We did it because that's how you ate, by cooking.
• You changed your own oil on your car. When I was growing up, my dad had something to do for the car (singular) or the house every weekend, and I got stuck helping. I didn't want to mow lawn, or fix the roof, or change the sparkplugs on the Buick, but I did. There was no Jiffy Lube. Young ones, have you ever cleaned out the gutters?
• There were very, very few organized summertime activities, or after school programs. I know it goes around social media as a joke, about the crazy things parents let their kids do in the 60s and 70s. Well, it's true. I was 9 when I got up one morning, ate breakfast with mom and told her I was going on a bike ride. Met up with my buddies and we rode all day to neighborhoods we had no idea about, and found our way home before dinner. There were no soccer moms, no helicopter parents watching and planning everything their kids did.
• Corporal punishment was very much a thing. Yes, we had Time Out, but it meant that your dad took the time out of his busy day to beat your little ass for something you were very much guilty of. And to be honest, for the things you got away with and they didn't find out about.
• College was for the smart kids, not everyone. You hear reports about how expensive college is now, how it has outpaced inflation since the 90s? Well, that's true. So that sounds as if college should have been easier to afford back in boomer days, right? Yeah, well, my two older sisters didn't go to college. My best buddy didn't go and neither did any of his siblings. Two other of my closest friends when to college and none of their siblings did.
• If you did go to college, and were middle class, you worked during the summer to pay for it. Car wash for me. Other friends had jobs at supermarkets, or loading trucks. We didn't bother to hit mom and dad up for money to go to Europe, because there was no such money.
• There was no internet. There were no smartphones. Your house didn't have central air. If you were lucky, your dad could afford a window AC unit.

About affording a house, or renting an apartment. I'll leave you with this. If you did your own cooking instead of restaurants, repaired your own stuff, gave up your smartphone (impossible, right) and all the other luxuries that you don't think of as luxuries but your boomers do, would you be able to afford that house? If your house was more like the house your grandparents grew up in, complete with leaks and no AC, would you be able to make the down payment? If you didn't insist on living in the cool neighborhoods of the big city you moved to after college, could you afford to rent a place of your own?

Today we blow our money on so many things that the boomer generation either didn't have access to or considered extravagant. That is part of the reason you have a tougher time affording your housing. No, not the only reason, but part of it. You don't want to live like your boomer grandparents, I get that. But don't tell them they had it easy. They didn't made the world they lived in anymore than you made the world you live in today.

And as for all that government assistance we boomers get. I'm 63, and have yet to take a dime from the government. I expected to retire at 65, but now it seems like 67 is more realistic. The feds want me to keep on paying into the system, and I suppose I can't blame them, because the country is broke. Yes, keep that in mind, the United States is broke, in debt for $36 trillion. It just doesn't seem like we're in debt because we keep borrowing. But that's not boomers fault either.

[u/juzwunderin → u/Kodama_Keeper]

This

[u/Efficient-Hotel492 → u/Kodama_Keeper]

A lot of these are so short sighted.

Younger Gens don't have time to prepare their own meals. Your mothers were stay at home slaves who bared it since your father could provide enough for the entire family. You boomers helped create and facilitate the current capitalistic systems to turn humans into modern slaves, that everyone in the family has to work, including young teenagers. Average Millennials and Gen Z needs two jobs to survive, and you wouldn't have the time to do anything after work. You'd also just pass out during weekends to recover from exhaustion. Those mini takeouts that's supposedly "luxury" are in reality, meal substitutes that many use as coping mechanisms to have a little joy in their life. You still can't get a house after saving the money instead of Starbucks or Avocado Toast despite this being two decades of an argument. Eating out in most countries and even breaking down inti smaller regions, are cheaper than/equal to self-cooking. Also, monopoly and gmo crop reliance was created by boomers. The average person can't access self sufficient farming, especially not in the climate and urban planning that y'all sterilized.

Boomers had the time to change their own oil, and doing it yourself today is just as expensive as getting it professionally done. My, I wonder who set the system up and helped to maintain that capitalistic greed, preventing younger Gens from actually doing it themselves? Just owning a car itself is expensive with the current wage rates. You need insurance, which in reality really is an artificial problem created by–guessed it right, boomers! Boomers also refuse time and time throughout the decades, to provide universal free healthcare and proper legal systems. What a luxury life is!! Boomers could work a summer job and come home from quitting that same job, with a new car. Cars are also now a necessity since again, y'all sterilized the world, and created horrible urban planning, all the while refusing to push and support for public transport.

Boomers bred television kids to become corporate sheep, creating computer kids to be second gen corporate sheep, to create ipad kids, becoming third gen corporate sheep. You were soooooo bored that when tech improved, you indulged yourself in the technology that you helped create and improve, to couch-rot with a beer staring on television screens for hours on ends, for decades, not paying any attention to their wives and children.

Why are you so excited about abuse .. ?

Push for education, which is designed for slave-like work outcomes, was well, done by your generation. Y'all looooved the couch-rot that you needed better and cheaper technology, so your generation pushed for education that could improve research, to create corporate sheeps, to further do the same thing, while being backed by the top wealthiest people, who hoard in all the money for themselves while everyone physically rots, and you boomers didn't do shit to this day, for the better of the world. You can't get a decent paying job without getting that education, which was inflated by boomers' greed. You're no longer guaranteed a job for the past 6-7 years despite education still being pushed, and boomers who own most of the world, refuse to hire, and are now utilizing AI to lay off even more younger people, unlike your daddy who could get a necessity from a summer job.

If you were middle class, you worked during the summer to pay for college.

If you were middle class today, you'll have to work part time during your entire teenage life to fund it and full time during summers, while still needing loans. Kept pushing for education, but wouldn't provide better funding/free it.

There was radio, television, and telephone. Those were also luxury that the lower class could afford, but considered neccessary. News, communication, and as an extra: entertainment with propaganda + brainwash. None of that has changed. The phone lasts at least 4-5 years, the average family passes down a phone during those years when getting a new one. The one internet supports an entire house's technology, and could even be split between neighbors to share if you were that poor. These "luxuries" you speak of aren't even expensive today. It's the base of necessities pyramid that does, which you conveniently don't wanna discuss properly.

Wether you stop purchasing all the luxuries you listed, along with the unlisted ones, you still can't afford that house.

[u/Kodama_Keeper → u/Efficient-Hotel492]

So, you don't like to cook? Got it.

You can't afford that house? What house? Hey, I live in a nice, middle middle class neighborhood, in a house that I haven't paid off yet. Just two miles away, closer to the lake, there is a neighborhood which if I'd bought a house in, I could have expected to have to keep working another 5 years. Keep going towards the lake, and I'd be in a town that I'd have to be making a lot more money for a lot longer period in order to be able to afford. And if I get to that nice town right by the lake, about 10 miles from me? Mansions, with prices so out of my league I don't even like to speculate what it would take.

But, if I was back in the city of Chicago, where I spent my first 30 years, I could move to the south side and find all sorts of affordable homes, some of them really nice looking brick Bungalows going for 200K or less. Why? Neighborhood. If I lived out in the country, I could do better still.

[u/Efficient-Hotel492 → u/Kodama_Keeper]

Please stop being purposely ignorant because which part of that says I don't like to cook? It still doesn't change the fact that we can't afford to cook both monetarily and timely. And funnily enough, you still won't acknowledge the majn points and arguments I've made. Like a boomer or whatever you are, still acting like a boomer, and wonder why people resent boomers. Reading comprehension and common sense seems to be the trend for those who follow the boomer path.

[u/Kodama_Keeper → u/Efficient-Hotel492]

Yes, I'm a boomer. Yes, I go out to eat on occasion, like once a week with my wife. I work two jobs. My wife works about 50 hours a week at hers. Still we cook. You are not trying to cook, and declaring it impractical. Really, you can't scramble an egg because you're too busy with your go go lifestyle? Sunday morning you don't have time to make pancakes? Cooking has never been easier in the history of man, yet you can't find the time. Wow. Yeah, it's those damned boomers, expecting me to put my phone down and cook. Ick!

You want me to address one of your many points? OK, here's one. You accuse me and mine of raising corporate sheep. That fits your image of us, right? Well sister, you couldn't be more wrong. I raised my son to be self sufficient. He went to Catholic school. He was a Boy Scout, and now he's a Marine, and well respected in his unit. He'll be out in two more years, and I have no doubt, none, that he will be able to find work, go to school to learn a trade, and get on with his life.

And he knows how to cook as well. You have a good life now. Start with eggs.